George Campbell (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Abetz, the Minister representing the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources. As a minister who likes to play the guessing game, guess who said this:

... we have accepted the science of greenhouse ...

We are not trying to buck that science, and we are not trying to talk down the urgency. We do believe this is an urgent matter.

For the minister’s benefit, it was Senator Hill, the then Minister for the Environment, in November 1996. Why was it that in 1996 the environment minister accepted the science of climate change and saw the need for urgent action, yet 10 years on the Prime Minister remained a sceptic, as evidenced by his statement last November that he was not going to be rushed into a panicky response to something that might not be as bad as many are predicting? Isn’t it true that the climate change sceptics won the debate inside the government and that the government is still deeply divided and firmly in denial?